Frames
by utsushidasu
Summary: The eighth captain intentionally interrupts a rare outburst. Set some time before the Arrancar Arc.


The edged glass of the picture frame, its borders a stormy grey, maintained routine lifelessness until, in an overpowering paroxysm, her hand provoked its tersely vehement descent to the matted floor. It had been the only openly emotional display she had allowed herself in days, and though she had physically felt the exact moment when her rage had finally overwhelmed her sense of cool restraint, she couldn't help surveying her arm's harsh trajectory with unwitting surprise and it didn't take long for the feeling to plummet into all too familiar shame.

The near stifled shriek of glass had made her jump, but still swept up in the torrent of anger, which had been mounting gradually to an ultimately irrepressible altitude over the last few months, it took her a moment to remember why she had been so inexcusably stupid as to allow something as ephemeral and unreasonable as memory to tarnish both her outward and inner calm. She was alone in her quarters and and knew she should be grateful that she hadn't had this kind of tantrum around the other division members, but she alone had always been her most merciless critic. She was perfectly comfortable with displaying the appropriate amount of indignant resistance or noble fury at her captain's incessant teasing or drunken indolence, but as much as she tried to ignore it, blowups like this were not logical. She could not suitably explain to anyone what she was feeling or why she felt the way she did, least of all to the key person involved.

She strained her eyes to return to the broken glass splayed across her old mentor's Shin'ō Academy headshot, but couldn't travel any farther than the long black braid that had been draped over the woman's left shoulder. She had been ensnared in what she considered an aggravatingly pathetic sequence of love and something like hate since the disappearance so many years and years ago, having to purchase a new patterned frame every couple years or so, swearing that she had forgiven and forgot—"No, nothing to forgive!" she snapped, reminding herself—only to find herself sink back into the same torturous lies about herself and former guide. It wouldn't have been so hard to accept had the woman not seemed like the slightest bit of a mother figure to her, the only woman in her younger years who had taken a personal interest in her and her future career, who had seemed to respect her values, tastes, and the early forming of her personality even in their short years in each other's company. Nanao knew she owed everything she had to the woman's almost unprecedented decision to accept the younger one's merely adequate application for assignment in the Eighth. She knew now that she had no one to blame but herself for such naiveté, for such sloppy expectations of enduring bonds and lasting connection in a universe she herself had not wholly survived in a way. It had been almost strangely tolerable as a child to learn of disappearance and likely death, and she had been able to nod that night with stoic acceptance though her short hair had ruffled across ears distressed by the news in the evening wind, but the loss seemed to grow heavier over time as the echoing absence of any new real association blotted a blankly black map of the loneliness that was her personal life. She told herself to let the glass surface's shattered cry fulfill her own now unnerving need to vent, but tears seemed to spring up on their own, trailing wet stinging salt soundlessly down to her clenched jaw.

The frame's swift crash had also unconsciously reminded her of sleepless Rukongai nights where one's spiritual potential and basic humanity were hopelessly marred by the inescapable desperation of the dusty streets. And nights like this were always the worst, when memories took on twisted shapes in the dark to smother you with their impossibly detailed backdrops and lavish indifference to seemingly ever departing. Since her arrival in Seireitei, as each fresh experience reversed a little more of what she thought she knew about souls, she always endeavored to exemplify the precise opposite of what she had experienced and seen in others out in that sometimes ravenous wilderness, the inherent squalor and self-serving violence. She did her best to grow roots in the Eighth without sacrificing any more of the heart she'd learned to hide with the erratic trappings of intimacy. She succeeded in emulating moderation, poise, and productivity to make up for any perceived failures of the past. But even with the new acquaintances and a deeper sense of self, both of which obscured her origins more than satisfactorily, at times like these she felt like an imposter, a liar leading them, and more importantly him, on. The notion of sharing such toxic shame with someone else was dreadfully unappealing, although she couldn't admit that her mind didn't draw her back to the same face whenever her thoughts decided to aimlessly divert her with the frail hope of future mutual understanding and love. Still, she couldn't shake the thought that it was safer and better somehow that she was the only one she could disappoint with nights like this.

She had never grown out of resorting to kidou burns to scold herself. It was only once and a while and even when she did, she knew she acknowledged too much of the practice as a perverse relief for it to truly be a reprimand devoid of selfishness. She named her marks as necessary indulgences whenever her self-imposed isolation got to be perhaps too much, and was diligent in removing any trace of the minor injuries when the dull but nearly adequate pain inevitably subsided and the almost impenetrable serenity of desk work, that was sheer monotony to others, mellowed her heart of even its most terrible yet fondest aches. She was now bitterly aware that it would never be something to simply "grow out of." It was the same internalized argument, the voluntary dejection of decades that hounded her now, as ever before. Nanao turned her back on the irrational but easily manageable mess she'd made and the woman near the heart of it, determined even in mental defeat not to physically join the photograph on the floor no matter how much her knees and throbbing headache protested the effort to keep standing. In the back of her mind, though she appreciated her lightning fast return to relative composure, she also loathed the small part of herself that couldn't even commit to wreaking complete havoc. No, her closet and futon and bookshelves were as neat and tidy as she had led everyone in her life to believe she was inside.

The mystery of the woman's departure was made all the more painful by having to witness someone else go through the same thing, albeit with different and perhaps more sinister facets of self-destruction, especially when that someone was her captain. She had hated to feel even more ineffective over the years—as a lieutenant, as a friend—when such an enormous chasm of experience had already seemed willing to ceaselessly divide them in each sphere of their lives. If anything, over the years it had grown in her opinion, devouring a diet of her self-doubt, what she took as his false pity, and her hapless fear of further abandonment. She didn't know how to ask if it was her fault, if she could have done something more, and yet knowing the egocentrism and pettiness inherent in such a train of thought, she had spent so much time suspecting that that was the case immediately after the incident that it seemed futile to try to revise what seemed obvious to her and fully ingrained now. Though she knew it was much too late to get any sort of straight or honest answer anyway, it would be nice to ask and be told otherwise, but whenever she seemed close to considering it her mind summoned rerun after rerun of some hideous subconscious scenario in which her captain, in a candid mood, doubtlessly drunk, affirmed her guilt and even worse, with the same lackadaisical manner with which he regarded their "romance." Clearly, emotional avoidance and withdrawal was the preferable and most logical option. It had been so long since it'd happened anyway and it would be insensitive of her to force him to assuage her or to assume he'd want to address the issue at all; there would be no natural way to bring it up and the past had never been one of her nor her captain's favorite topics.

"Nanao-chan?" Three benignly insistent knocks outside her door were accompanied by a familiar voice, warm but pickled with concern. It had only been ten minutes or so since she'd left work for the day but the moon had lit the sky on her way home. She'd been spending much more time in the practice fields and had been leaving the office later than usual, always after dark, hoping to exhaust herself into dreamless sleep before she let her mind drag into disquiet. She had been mostly alone in the office today, but it wasn't the same as being alone with her thoughts in a broodingly noiseless apartment. She had arrived home numbly enough, but while shedding her zōri and tabi the thoughts she'd learned to pointlessly dread had thwarted her initial listlessness, steeping to a burst of momentarily keen anguish. By the time of the knocking, it had only been moments since she had aggressively relocated the picture frame of the fierce-looking school-age Lisa. At her captain's voice, she jumped in shock, her feet inadvertently thrusting rather savagely on the piercing evidence of her outburst. She proceeded to slip to the floor in pain with a soft thud, small shards of glass shooting every which way in a tinkling parade. She was clutching her sides, lying on her uniformed back right on top of Lisa's now hidden indomitable expression when Shunsui shoved open the door, anxiously alert.

"My, my, what have you been up to?" He asked it innocently enough, but his tone contrasted his speed in rushing to her, kneeling carelessly amid the fragments to hold her to him. He was quite protected by both the geta he wore and his self-designated multilayered uniform, but she registered in some part of her mind that he'd always swoop in no matter the cost; she was startled to find that the thought afforded her a small but welcome comfort amidst her anxiety for the imminent examination. He had a way of making even her most trifling injuries seem nonsensically significant, medical emergencies for which only he could supply the balm, and she knew that this reminder of his generally exasperating coddling should only irritate her more, but was too distracted by his movement. She would've oozed out of his gentle grasp with molten mortification had she not been preoccupied with wrinkling her eyebrows in pain at the chunk of glass embedded in her right foot. Nanao tried her best not to blush, to simply ignore her awkward position and her captain's fervidly cooing efforts to cradle her. She barely remembered to answer his question, though it had seemed mostly rhetorical in nature.

"N-n-nothing." She cursed herself for failing not to stammer but could always blame the pain, she mused.

"I merely tripped, sir. Maybe if you hadn't startled me…," she began sharply but trailed off in discomfort. She decided to replace shame with light anger, an emotion she was much more accustomed to sharing with him. "I'm sure you have no business here, captain. Office hours are over." She glared at him with reddening cheeks, straightening her glasses though they had been indifferent to her fall.

"How could I resist any opportunity to see my Nanao-chan after work?" He was assessing the damage to her feet, and sensing her gaze, grinned easily yet with eyes too serious for her taste, soon rising to gather her up unauthorized with one hand looping under her back and one under and around her hakama-covered knees.

"What are you doing? This is completely unnecessary, sir. I am perfectly capable of handling this on my own. And I wouldn't call anything you did today work." She rolled her eyes in overt protest, knowing it was all for naught once he'd already virtually rendered her immobile from his touches and grand gestural lift, but much opposed to the idea of his gloating that she hadn't openly opposed his touch at once. She tried to fight the heat she felt racing up her cheeks by reflecting on more practical matters, such as small thankfulness that the frame hadn't split into too many pieces, the angle of her feet hadn't seemed to have been too inviting to what slivers there were, and she hadn't welcomed any major cuts that she could feel besides the one from a corner of the frame's surface. She propped herself higher in his grasp to assert control, paying no perceptible heed she thought he could sense to their electric shift in contact but a deepening blush. Tense in the effort to avoid eye contact, she slanted the sole of her foot back at her to get a better view and could see its sluggish red drip.

Her empty resistance pleased but slightly disconcerted Shunsui. As he carefully lifted her above the minor mess and began carrying her to the door of the Western-style bathroom on the other side of the room, he tried to gauge the last time he'd been in Nanao's quarters. Nothing new about her arrangements or simple décor jumped out at him, and his full lips curled upward instinctively in appreciation of his Nanao-chan's minimalist ethic. To him, she was infinitely beautiful, elegant, and graceful in her pragmatism. His eyes intensified in a way he knew she couldn't miss as they aimed a wider, knowing smile her way, quickly zeroing in on the barely dried tracks of tears that he hadn't noticed earlier. Nanao felt his gaze and intuitively looked back up at him, realizing his recognition by the downward curve of his lips and the distress lines of his brow. Her eyes struggled to resume focus on the pattern of his haori as she aspired to reassume her typical frosty demeanor. Her now plum-colored blush only highlighted the salty streaks and she tried to inconspicuously brush them off under the pretext of readjusting her glasses. There was likely no point in arguing it as an accident now, she thought ruefully, but it was all his fault for distracting her so in the first place. Perhaps she could say the pain of the glass had made her cry, but she had endured much worse scrapes in battle and even in training without such marked emotion, and he was far too shrewd for his own good. Even so, he hadn't seemed to notice Yadomaru-san's photo when he'd picked her up, probably much too obsessed with the fate of her damaged foot, and she hoped, knowing it was likely in vain, that she could hurry back out of the restroom to reverse the thing and claim it some arbitrary scrap, when he decided she was bandaged up well enough.

Although her apartment was small and predictably designed, she couldn't suppress the small joy that he still knew his way around from infrequent visits and didn't ask directions to where he remembered she kept most of her medical supplies. She refastened her arms in her small lap, trying to touch as little of him as possible to make up for what seemed like unhealthy satisfaction. He still hadn't said anything that might reveal what he'd already worked out about the situation so far, but Nanao knew he must be trying to solve the puzzle she'd unintentionally presented him with just as vigorously as she was trying to disassemble this absurd finished scene she'd landed herself in to find a completely different and exceedingly rational way to tie up the same pieces. It was probably just another intriguing but cursory game for him, which made her all the more adamantly against divulging even a variant of the truth. She tried concentrating on preparing sufficient explanation for the scene her captain had unhelpfully barged in on, attempting to calm her mind enough to strategize, but felt a random twinge of pain shoot from her foot and merely managed a more sullen shade of red, mentally reaming herself for being so foolish and irresponsible. Why hadn't she locked the door? Why hadn't she checked discreetly for his reiatsu before she'd decided to lose it? It would have bought her more time at least from what was undoubtedly going to be a full interrogation. No matter how he would choose to cushion or sugarcoat his inquiries, she knew he would pursue the issue until he was met with the most acceptable conclusion, especially when it had resulted in physical harm on her part.

Shunsui flipped on the light switch in the small washroom and stationed her delicately on the lid of the toilet, fighting the imposingly easy desire to comment playfully on the fully blossomed flush of her cheeks. He assumed a precarious position on the edge of the bath to get a closer look at her feet which, despite the deep red gash, preserved a fluent femininity only accentuated by the faded scars of his bronzed enveloping hands.

"There are bandages and things that may prove useful in the cupboard above the sink," she offered softly, trying to escape his blatant eyeing, but sensing inward defeat in everything. She was disappointed in herself that she couldn't seem to form a good enough account of what had happened, but more so that she desired a lie in lieu of the truth that seemed to hurt more to constantly have to shroud. The resignation in her voice surprised them both, and stealing a glance, he could see in her eyes and forehead the tense struggle to adopt a firmer approach that would always immediately follow what she considered some fatal slip. He was busy weighing the pros and cons of tickling the arches of her feet until she abandoned her thin frown and anxious eyes when she seemed to regain a semblance of their usual dynamic on her own, with the sure and steady voice of what she thought suited a lieutenant.

"I can prop my legs over the bath while you retrieve the necessary supplies." She added a near miserable "sir" a second too late for him not to realize woefully anew how wretchedly exposed she must feel to him in her current position. She was reverting to the safety of protocol he knew she could not help but covet with her own strict gratification. He was always a bit crushed but endlessly intrigued by the part of her that felt compelled to hide her thoughts from him, that was forever reminding him of rank and whatever distance she thought it proved between them. During their time together however, he had grown adept in catching drifts she'd never meant to markedly imply, that were accurate nonetheless. In conversation together, both with and without words, he could perceive a rudimentary outline of her network of safeguards that always seemed to be working with what he supposed to be the utmost speed and analytical agility. She refused to accept anything less of herself but had been gradually softening to him for years.

With confidence in her coming further and further around to him, he had no devastating qualms about letting her take all the time she required. Moreover, he had always found himself delighted by her cleverly hidden defenses, thrilling in the awareness that she knew he was just as skillful at construing as she was at constructing in the first place. Subtle impressions of this dance of theirs were always an enthralling contrast to her standard pretense of emotional detachment; it proved she had something to hide and could that something really be anything other than a specific few of the most basic of emotions? He liked to believe that whatever they were, they were reserved solely for him, that he just hadn't found the perfect combination of words and expression, of love and poetry, to positively persuade her into submission to her own carefully encrypted sensibility, something he hoped she thought only he deserved to decode.

His field experience in Rukongai had enlightened him enough to draft the simplest sketch of her upbringing, which he suspected to be the foundation of the insecurities she had quite valiantly striven to diminish since joining the Eighth. His pride was indescribable to have been the one to see her fight and usually overcome them, at least momentarily, all this time and most of all with him alone. Still, at times like this he had to admit feeling discouraged that he couldn't seem to thread and ease the dark roots out no matter the spirit or tone of his cogent coaxing thus far. He craved detail, the shapes and colors and shades and tints of her soul, to complete the work of art he'd looked on in exclusive longing for years now. What he perceived as his most devout but auspiciously still pending desire was for Nanao to receive him as her unquestionable complement, with a much more stimulating relationship than mere amicable professionalism could deal either of them. It was for this reason that his small distracted sigh at her divisive "sir" just couldn't be helped.

"I'll get them without delay, Nanao-chan." He also used her nickname as a reminder, purposely dropping the earlier terms of possessiveness. He smiled at her eyes for the sake of friendship and in part to let her know he appreciated her effort to be strong, though they had different understandings of the word. As much as he wanted her to feel able and willing to come to him with things both pleasant and worrisome, it was still unreasonable and unfair of him to expect what she wasn't comfortable giving. He left her legs alone for her to do with them what she'd requested and stood to rummage through the designated cabinet for first aid elements. The shelves were neatly arranged as expected with a few small boxes of adhesives, antiseptic sprays and wipes, and some old half-emptied bottles she'd apparently saved of medicine for past ailments that had landed her in the Fourth's care. Of course at the time even the slightest fever of hers had sent his mind and stomach lurching, but he was presently happy to loosely relive how he had been able to be there for her like no one else, even for all his past mistakes with her. While deciding on a roll of gauze, some adhesive tape, and an antibacterial ointment he trusted, his eyes swept over a bottle of capsules on the hinged side of the cupboard door. He recognized the type on the front sticker as a sedative Retsu-san had prescribed for him in the past after particularly haunting battles. In the first instance, he had been a bit of an insomniac wreck and had let Ukitake somehow convince him with consciously vacant threats about hiding his liquor if he didn't at least try the simple treatment out. The mere fact that his friend had cared enough to make them had made it easier to yield back into health.

"Nanao-chan, you're taking sleeping pills?" He asked unthinkingly. He had wanted her to feel like she could lead the discussion in whatever direction she wanted to, if she wanted to talk at all, but had effectively quashed all hope of that out of the instant worry that had seized his heart. He placed the gauze and things on the side of the sink, forgetting her physical distress for the mental strain he'd failed to spot in her earlier in the week. He picked up the bottle and looked down at her, presenting his discovery, too worried about this aspect of her health to think about how his inquiries on such a personal topic might simply exacerbate her anxiety.

Nanao shook her head hotly but was inexplicably murmuring a barely discernible groan of a "yes" not even seconds later, when she'd dared to look at him and had watched as his right eyebrow slanted towards the wavy roof of his head. His eyes squinted with searching doubt that alternately infuriated and pleased her. "I mean, I was, but I didn't like the way they felt. Unlike you, I'm not and couldn't get used to using unnatural methods for rest. I merely never got around to throwing them out." She amended her earlier confession crisply, trying to muster up as much icy fearlessness as possible, at least for appearance's sake, for the next few minutes during which she expected her captain to become inclined to grilling her ceaselessly on what dark and dirty secrets could possibly be keeping her up, on why she hadn't sought his personal advice and why she hadn't involved him in any way whatsoever. She took a stab at his habits as a dare and hoped he would know to back down. She knew he already implicitly knew the answers to those whys and that what he would really be asking, if he asked at all, was why she still couldn't find it in her to want to include him in the more intimate planes of her life. Even the thought of his interview and its hidden layers irked her. She had long since forgotten the somatic pain associated with her foot, but refused to say more on the subject of her sleeping habits before he did.

Shunsui tried not to seem any more nervous than he felt was needed to prove his concern, as sedatives were not all that unusual for shinigami, and he certainly didn't want to stigmatize her by expressing an unnecessary amount of incredulity that would only aggravate the inferiority complex she tried to couch with noble notions of duty, her own impressive philosophies on authority, deference, and morality that she'd spent countless hours in the library assembling, that she sparingly chose to share with him. He merely nodded, a little stunned by the intended sting of her elaboration and suddenly moved by the task of letting her let him know whatever she liked. He shelved the bottle and any current further exchange on the matter. But he was surprised by her admission, no matter how initially grudgingly it was given, and especially after only a lone denial that was rather feeble by her standards. It was not like her to give in to the truth so easily, not when she would feel it would make her appear weak, and he could imagine the war raging in her mind, to know that it had been her who had readily invited him to rifle through her medicine cabinet.

He had seen she had been overworking herself all week but that in and of itself was not so out of the ordinary. What had really surprised him at the time, and what he now wished he had found more significant, was her willingness to lead the sword training sessions that she had always originally been more than satisfied to entrust to another of their seated officers. At the time, a few days ago, he had been content to allow her to do as she wished, hoping that she had perhaps not entirely lost interest in a zanpakutō that sadly seemed to find no interest in speaking to her. Only now, after her rather brave concession could he comprehend the likely intent of her proposal that day. When the pills hadn't helped in the way she'd wanted, she had hoped to physically chase sleep, and though it was probably just as well that she had gotten some swordplay in, he felt a strange mix of sharp regret and warm sympathy—the former because he had been idle, had lounged around while she was hurting, and the latter because he had tried much the same in his earlier years when he hadn't yet fully invested in tolerance to the personally soothing effect of sake by the saucer.

He remembered the reason she'd vaguely tolerated his presence in her bathroom in the first place. He hurried to retrieve the first aid equipment and sat nimbly on the floor, knees somewhat cramped in the small space between the sink and tub. Guiding her feet slowly down to him, he looked to her eyes and began fixing her up in silence when she nodded her consent for him to go ahead. He pulled the glass from her foot tenderly and tossed it into a corner bin. As she watched his procedure, she detected a certain edginess about his face and shoulders that crested as he watched his hand discard the jagged edge draped with her blood. Though tonight's cause seemed far preferable in his mind to some hollow ambush or spattered battle, it was the possibility of the symptoms that had had him ever at odds with her pride, and the sight of her blood now stirred that old fear ruthlessly. While in girlhood she had reluctantly seemed to enjoy his overprotection and deliberately evident favoritism, as she'd grown his tactics had seemed to rupture an important factor of identity and autonomy in her. He presently let himself remember a day in the office when she had explosively confronted him about his responsibility for her lack of field experience, how her unshielded eyes—she had placed her glasses primly on her desk before marching over to him—had seemed to say that his mistrust cut her more than any theoretical wound he'd been stubbornly forcing her to evade ever could. She had never understood that it was never any part of her he doubted but himself and his ability to forgive himself for any injury she might receive while in the division they shared and under his specific care. He had never before nurtured such an interminably deep defensive care for a woman, nor one who also happened to be a shinigami with the tasks unique to the Gotei 13, and it hadn't taken long to realize her firm status as perhaps the most beautiful combination of both the former and the latter after such displays in the office.

Even though the pang was short-lived and he had graciously warned her beforehand, the cleaning of the wound had stung and reminded her of the spoilt anguish he'd disrupted before, that she feared he would never understand or wouldn't even care to try, not that she was anxious to launch into an explanation worthy of his empathy. He had been quick but thorough, squeezing out and stroking a comfortingly cool ointment over the cut, and binding it with gauze. He had ripped off a section of the adhesive tape with the swift friction of his teeth and she was momentarily mesmerized by the way he pressed it thoughtfully firm over her sole. She blinked not once nor breathed while he lightly arched her leg and his head to plant a soft kiss on the outcome of his meticulous mission of the last five minutes. She felt the heat of his touch not in her foot but her gut as warmth rallied instinctively. She couldn't help blushing a bit dreamily this time, eyes alight, unbidden, and could not turn away or voice the censure some part of her still felt she ought to for his exclusive touches. He distracted her further by conceding to his earlier scheme of frown removal with the pretense of painstakingly examining both feet for stray silver slivers. He searched from her soles to the tips of her toes with feather-light traces of reiatsu. She couldn't wholly repress a whimpering smile as his fingers tickled and tortured, expertly conducted rolling impressions of billowing sensation wherever they went in their duplicitous search, double-checking each line and arch and angle that made her shivering grin the widest.

"All better, Nanao-chan?" He simpered, eyes heavy with amusement and glinting with giddy triumph, narrowly avoiding what would have been an accidental kick in the jaw as she squirmed to stay on her seat. At a prolonged break between ministrations, she thought it best to begin cagily dispensing with the beam that had been steadily growing and tried to resume her former seriousness, eager but utterly uncertain of how to show her gratitude for his seemingly dual healing. No one knew her better than him, no one had ever made anywhere near the effort he did, not that his attentions had been anything that she had expected or initially desired. But his seemingly easy insight unnerved her and she forced herself to swallow the uncomfortable recognition that understanding does not necessitate personal interest or enduring attraction.

"Not entirely, Captain Kyōraku." She wanted at least to be able to offer him honesty. Her spine straightened parallel to the wall behind her but her eyes faltered and wouldn't venture farther than his neck. "You want to know what happened…out there"—she gestured loosely towards the door, pausing as her teeth tugged at the inside of her lip—"and I-I know I'm not ready to clarify my actions, not to you. Not to myself. I'm not sure if there is any rationalization for my behavior. And I cannot understand why you seem to have to act like you have to care…" Her voice diminished gradually in her dawdling. She was frazzled by flashes of thoughts of too maddening and disheartening a number to choose the right one to voice, scared to say nothing and even more anxious to say anything more. The unsettled look about her eyes entranced him. The palpable mental tussle she was putting herself through for him and her shaken breathing melted his heart in an odd way. He stood, holding his left arm low for her as a crutch. She took in silent but grateful shame and rose with her right foot on tiptoes. The cling of his fingers invoked a feeling in her of both relief and an obscure displeasure she did not want to fathom that he made no moves to lift her so effortlessly to his arms as he had before.

"You don't have to do or tell me anything you don't want to, Nanao-chan. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I know I've been neglecting you." He ran his right index finger down her chin to have her meet his eyes with a loving tilt.

"This isn't your job, sir. I'm not—"

"I would never say that, Nanao-chan. You are not an obligation. You must know that. I would consider anything you might share with me as a treasure unmatched, but I can also appreciate the premise of your opposition." She was overcome with envy at his ease, his skill at dealing with her even at what must seem to him like her most uncharacteristic. She felt the beginning of something like a warm stillness lulling her mind at last for all the kindness in his words. She must be mad, she thought, to find superior comfort in his voice and the substance of his words than in his previous actions. His eyes held every confidence in her. She had never been so close to ceding to him what had been pressed tacitly to her heart for too long.

"Though, I must say, you are right to suspect that I'd be deeply interested to know what could push someone as strong and capable and collected as my Nanao-chan over the edge. What did that picture frame ever do to my Nanao-chan? Or should I ask, who in the picture offended my Nanao-chan to such an intolerable degree?" His tone had gradually increased in gravity and his gaze was at its most intense, but she could not help but sense an undertone of amusement at her expense. She had been increasingly leaning the leg of her injured foot against his left leg, never leaving his eyes, to better distribute her weight and to tenuously represent her permitting him to bear at least an extra fraction of the burden he claimed to desire most from her. And even as she allowed herself this small step forward, she resented her action for how ashamed his empty compliments made her feel only seconds later, and his all-knowing self-assured finish was too much. She had almost believed she'd get the clean retreat she'd been hoping for since her heart had sunk at the sound of his call. She was too easy.

"I-I—," she stuttered hopelessly, her breath coming out in progressively short, huffy gasps. She rolled her eyes and stole her arm back roughly from his grasp, limping uneasily but as fast as possible out of the door. Ignoring her captain's protests, she staggered angrily over the shattered glass to where Lisa's portrait lay. She stamped it roughly for emphasis and used her left foot to thrust it half a foot in his direction, their mutual friend's self-possessed expression immortalized between them. He disregarded the movement on the floor entirely, striding to her to pick her up and guide her to the bedroom area that was carpeted in deep blue, nearly the color of her eyes at their glowing saddest, he couldn't help noting to himself. The marginal energy of her anger sunk and she couldn't string any words together let alone those of protest. He sat her against the wall and rushed to check her feet again, but found no fresh sores or still straggling chinks of glass.

"I had already seen, sweetheart. I never meant to be cruel, but attentive," he said sadly, voice and eyes alike exuding contrition as he removed his sandals. She flung her tears brashly from her cheeks when she saw him approaching from the corner of her eyes, presumably to implement the same end with softer means. He stopped to sit back against the adjacent wall, taking her legs across his lap to stroke the top of her feet and the cloth on her calves. She covered her face with her hands and he wanted to say something more but felt anything and everything unwise. He wished to have had a similar revelation before he had devastated the situation and driven her to tears. What use was exempting her from dangerous missions, even the most seemingly unthreatening of late-night patrols, when he seemed to be the greater risk to her happiness? After a few minutes she tugged at her glasses and set them down in the corner to swipe away any lingering wetness with her sleeves. She let her hands fall to her lap, picking at her nails and the skin of her fingers to avoid his gaze. She fleetingly wished he would go but felt an achingly similar sense of debt.

"Even before the bathroom?" She exhaled shakily and tried to breathe in and out with smoother control. He only nodded but she caught the movement from her eyes' margins as she repositioned her glasses on the bridge of her nose.

"When I felt your reiatsu burning halfway across Seireitei I had to come see you," he added after a couple of long minutes in which he watched as she adjusted to calm in the dark of the room.

"It's not even the anniversary, Nanao-chan." His remark was rueful with shared grief. She suspected he was referencing his personal tendency to associate specific dates with significant events that he allowed to inevitably lead to an inordinate amount of drinking. Not that he didn't drink as much as he liked anyway, whenever, wherever. It had seemed alright in the past, when he hadn't had Nanao-chan to worry about. Jyuu was more than capable of handling the both of them when his friend had wanted nothing more than to forget himself and the burdens of time and consciousness. But he knew it had been irresponsible of him to let the division and subsequently Nanao-chan subtly deteriorate for the long months after Lisa-chan absence. He unconsciously hauled passing memories of snatches of senseless rumors from the time when Nanao had first joined the Eighth, something along the lines of her being his and Lisa's love child. Regardless of the gossip's inherent fiction, he cringed violently in the dark knowing how appallingly careless he had been in their relationship then, preoccupied with despairing self-blame. How could his sweet Nanao fall into the same trap when he had been the one to alter his orders to send her out that night?

"It never had to be and you know that more than anyone." Her voice was soft and each word weighted as she endeavored to express her acknowledgment of the incident's wounding effect on the both of them. There was no heated edge to her words but a slow-moving somberness. "Neither I nor anyone else can be expected to just shut the feelings off or shut the memories out for all but one day of the year." She sniffed, instantly regretting the implication that there had been many, many nights where she'd condescended to this kind of low self-pity. Her eyes glazed over exhaustedly as they tried to focus on the opposite wall. At least for tonight, at her weariest she was also at her most confessional. She spoke quietly as she mourned.

"Sometimes I miss her so much I find it hard to breathe, but when I really think about it, I barely remember anything about her. Just the little braids I seemed to like so much and her thinly veiled contempt of our captain. And I remember some of the books she chose, specifically for me and to my taste, but I know I've somehow idealized it all too much. She had to go without—. Sometimes I hate—. I was no good to either of you." She fell silent, rubbing her forehead, despising herself for too many reasons, for saying too much or not enough, for feeling much too drained to move or care or make the right excuses. She knew she did not deserve the sideways relief of sleep but still struggled to stay alert. The strip of lamp light above the kitchen sink only just betrayed the blush that burned from the embers of her exertion, and she needed him to leave or say something before she deflated or somehow boiled over at his lack of address. She didn't know which would be worse but this span of inactivity from him, when she knew he was wide awake, was nothing short of terrifying.

Whenever he found himself in her presence, his thought process shifted naturally to contemplating things to say that would provoke a desired reaction in her and though it had never seemed to evolve into an easier task, he had never hoped nor wanted it to. He enjoyed nothing more than to wade through the teeming and intricate designs of his deepest and most human passion. He knew he could say or do nothing to permanently overturn what seemed to him like her peripheral sense of insufficiency, but he needed something simple and direct enough for this occasion when so much oppressed her heart. She had given so much and he didn't want her to feel in unpleasant hindsight that it had been too much or had meant nothing to him.

"Nanao, it wasn't your fault." His tone had a depth that impelled her eyes to glisten in the dark as he looked over to her. She hugged herself tightly around the waist to make up for some unruly, intangible, unreachable part of her, but soon dissolved into shuddering sobs, her head falling flatly to her lap. He grabbed a nearby cushion and propped up her legs gingerly before sidling beside her to draw long lines down her hair and trembling back.

"You don't know that. You can't know that." She maintained her voice momentarily with a whimpering brokenness not entirely muffled by her lap.

"There are a great deal of things of both worlds that I do not and cannot ever know, but in this case I can and I do. Listen to me, though we've lived through days shadowed by our powerlessness to change them, we are strong in our survival, and that means you are too, Nanao-chan." He hoped his words were felt sincerely, though he had so much more he wanted to say, as she quietly shook beneath his arms. He could only hope she could allow herself to be encouraged and remained vaguely certain that the peaceful sleep her thoughts had denied her for however long would represent the best remedy. He could see her begin to nod slightly, though hunched over in the darkness. She sat up shakily with few sniffles and slowly moved her head towards his, staring into the glinting grey pools of his eyes with the overwhelming desire to dive.

"Then it can't be yours either." The sad splashes of her cheeks seemed to lead upward to eyes glittering in the dark with hope, however frail. The sweet reasoning of her open absolution, and the way her hands moved to curl around his, sent him a solitary shiver and then an expansive warmth of gratitude he could only express with a kiss. He oriented himself lower towards her lips and waited for her answer. Her eyes drifted closed and her mouth moved forward to meet his as a soft lulling invitation. Each sighed upon contact and spent the night, much of the next morning, and the early afternoon surrounding the other in wakefulness, in sleep, and in dreams.

The next day, the Eighth's captain ordered a day off for his division's highest ranking pair. Nanao lent Yadomaru-san new lodging in a frame the two traveled to a Rukongai craft market to pick out together. That night she shared the contents of a box of belongings once stored safely in a back corner of her closet. She hadn't needed to explain the sole subject of her shrine-like collection and his inextricable threads throughout her life. He had been moved to speechless pleasure at her delicate extraction of long effusive letters she'd kept, some of them sent from him during overnight battles and missions, gifts of dedicated poems penned with flowing cursive ink, dried and pressed flowers from carefully selected arrangements, birthday notes, and a lone photograph of the two leaders of the Eighth clipped from a feature page in a previous Seireitei Monthly issue. When he suggested framing it for their shared quarters, he had been happily surprised when she later presented one of their shelves with a finished product of borders she herself had precisely painted with a pattern matching the floral pink of his haori. She blushingly explained at his convincingly tactile bidding that her mind had come to memorialize it as his own special hue. In the day and in the dark each would prove that the past's stormy grey had cleared.

* * *

A/N: My first stab at fanfic in almost forever, and my first Bleach fic. I'm so late in the game. Honestly, it's the first thing I've written besides terrible abstracted "poetry" and college essays in 3+ years, so I don't quite know how to judge it. Sorry if the language is a bit too heavy or pseudo-clinical. As my first attempt to dive into Nanao's brain with the written word, I think I wanted to be able to convey so much in each sentence that I merely ended up fusing endless run-ons together that most likely murder any potential for brevity or artful subtlety. I tried to switch voices or viewpoints rather a lot between the two and I don't like to repeat names too much in the narrative. Sorry for the almost total lack of dialogue, but descriptions are the most fun for me. I'm still unsure of how fast souls grow up and how long Nanao has held the title of lieutenant, so sorry for any timeline mistakes. I know I didn't get the two anywhere near spot-on, but there is likely a multitude of ways to interpret their relationship. Whenever Nanao makes a brief appearance in the manga she seems so incredibly well-adjusted and strong but I can't help writing her with all this pent-up anxiety that Shunsui can't help but stumble in on and unravel in her. I may have written her too flawed or angsty or juvenile for anyone's and maybe even my own liking. I wouldn't say my Shunsui is too canon either but for that to be true, they'd both have to be in the series much more (sadface), but I like examining the theme of obsession, especially between these two, even if it's executed with inordinate sappiness. No real plot, and even with the details I described there are probably gaping holes, but this was meant to be mostly mindless semi-fluff. Rated it T for "minor suggestive adult"-ish themes.


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